


The discovery of faith

by TheFierceBeast



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Bloodplay, Forgiveness, Guilt, Knifeplay, M/M, Nightcrawler - Freeform, Religion Kink, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Repentance, Slow Burn, Wolverine - Freeform, Wolverine 6, X2: X-Men United (2003), image inducer, logurt - Freeform, priest kurt, was that even a tag outside of LJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:25:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7841155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFierceBeast/pseuds/TheFierceBeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan wants Kurt to help him atone for his sins in Kurt's way.</p><p>Comicverse/movieverse mashup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The discovery of faith

**Author's Note:**

> I was going through some old fic from about 15 years ago and found this and didn't hate it, so I'm reposting here. It's probably the only one of my X-Men fics I'm reposting, for the sake of my dignity and everyone else's eyes :p

  
Friday, 8.15pm  
  
The sky is boiling, churning clouds that threaten rain but don’t keep their promises. Logan could’ve taken the bike, but he’s walking instead, expecting, _hoping_ to get caught in the downpour but just getting hot and irritated instead. That sticky, pensive stasis before a late-summer storm, dragging up the sewer-smell from the gratings in the sidewalk. A real _Raymond Chandler_ evening. Logan snorts, twitching his broad shoulders uncomfortably beneath the heavy leather of his jacket.  
  
The Box is on a side street just off the main drag. Quite close to the fashionable part of town for a mutie bar. Logan catches his reflection in the brass plate on the door, slaps it open a little more forcefully than necessary, sending the bell on it’s wire in to an audible frenzy. The bartender looks up from her music mag and smiles broadly at him. Yeah, she’s sweet on him. Sweet girl. He nods to her. She already has the pint mug out to pour his usual.  
  
The bar is dead, maybe six clients tops, all concentrated down the TV end. Logan sniffs the air; stale beer, stale smoke, the cinema-aroma of peanuts. Not what he’s looking for. The girl behind the bar shakes back her heavy, dyed braids and hands him his beer with her mutated hand, the fingers tentacle-like, wrapped around the moisture-streaked glass. Like she likes to be proud of that in front of him. _For_ him. He offers her a rueful smile, wishing he could just suck it up and wait until she gets off work. A late bite to eat someplace cheerful, a midnight movie, make out in her hallway and then in for ‘coffee’? She rolls her eyes at him good-naturedly and then her eyes flick oh-so-briefly towards a booth in the far corner. He pays with an overgenerous tip and wanders over, the quiet buzz of barroom chatter and the subdued cheers of the ball-game on TV making the atmosphere sleepy, arrested. _Dead end_.  
  
There’s only one person at this end of the bar, sitting in the booth nursing a drink that might be cola but smells to Logan like rum-and-cola. A middle-aged man in black, grey at his temples, writing in a little notebook. As Logan approaches he looks up as if startled and Logan sees the white collar at his throat.  
  
“Forgive me Father for I have sinned.”  
Logan speaks brusquely, running the words together. He sits heavily on the bench seat opposite the priest and the wood creaks. The wine-red pvc upholstery is starting to split at the edges, leaking disintegrating yellow sponge.  
The priest passes a hand over his face, his fingers odd-looking, arthritic. The strain of caring shows in the fine lines around his mouth and radiating from the corners of his eyes. When he speaks, his voice is very softly accented, the origins all but lost under years of New York living.  
  
“Why do you come here, child? Why do you do this to yourself?”  
  
Logan laughs grimly. ‘Child’. It never stops being funny.  
“Because I know you’ll be here.” He adds, “ _Father_.” Like it’s an accusation and the priest cringes. Logan’s expression softens a little.  
“C’mon. Church me! I need it, I’m an animal...”  
  
“You are not an animal.” Interrupts the priest. His hand strays closer to his glass like he’s dying for a drink. Logan reaches out and he flinches again, but Logan just pushes the glass closer, then picks up his own and drains half in one swallow. He raises a hand to the barmaid. _Keep ‘em coming._  
  
“Right. Religion’s what separates us from the beasts? So hear my confession.”  
  
The priest nods, his dark eyes solemn in his handsome, worn face. He reaches for his drink.  
  
  
Friday, 9.07pm  
  
“…then last Tuesday… found out that the guy I hospitalized in the Tucson thing last month, yeah? Well, he’s dead. You keeping a murder tally, cos I ain’t. I smoked. I drank – lemme see, beer of course, bourbon. Gin, fuck, why was I drinking _gin_? Oh, add that cuss on there. Yeah, I cussed. I took the Lord’s name in vain. I yelled at a kid for kicking a ball into a parked car. Actually, I think I swore at the kid, too…”  
  
Logan pauses, starts on his fourth beer. The man opposite him wears a patient, pained expression. He nods, encouragingly. Logan narrows his eyes, his voice becoming silky.  
  
“I thought about maybe getting a hooker, but I couldn’t spare the cash. I watched a porno. I jacked off – what’s that, ‘spilling your seed without intending to breed’?” Logan’s stare is challenging, but by now the priest is avoiding his eyes,  
“I had impure thoughts, Father. Do you want to know who they were about?”  
  
It’s interesting to watch the guy squirm. Logan leans closer, opens his mouth to begin, but the other man cuts him off.  
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”  
Logan shrugs noncommittally. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his jacket and taps one out onto the table.  
  
“Suit yourself. So what’s the damage?”  
  
The priest sighs wearily. The air between them hangs smoky before Logan even lights up.  
  
“Very well. Say 25 Hail…”  
  
“Nuh-uh.” Logan shakes his head, turns to blow smoke away from the booth, “You know I won’t do it.”  
  
“Then with all due respect, my son, why do you seek my counsel if you do not believe?” There’s a slight edge to the man’s voice, annoyance maybe. Or unease.  
  
“Oh, Jesus, will you _can_ it? You say you’re here to help me…”  
  
“I can’t…”  
  
“You _can_. You just _won’t_.”  
  
The glowing embers of the cigarette in Logan’s hand seem to collect and reflect in the priest’s eyes. He runs his awkward fingers through his greying hair.  
  
“You are a good man, Logan. A good man.”  
  
“Then I want penance the way _you_ do it.” Logan reaches out too quickly to avoid and grabs the priest’s hand. Feels beneath the illusion of the Image Inducer the raised scar-tissue there. The man opposite him licks his lips uncertainly and nods.  
  
  
Sunday, 10.52pm  
  
The teenage girl at reception looks at them with amused curiosity as they book a twin motel room. Her expression turns to almost-guilt at the sheer saintliness of the priest’s smile. She fiddles with a heavy gold chain around her neck and Logan can guess what’s on the end, hidden down her shirt. Hispanic Catholic. _They’re like a freakin’ secret society!_  
He follows the priest through the double doors and up a narrow flight of stairs, listening to the receding sounds of her acrylic nails drumming on the counter, the popping of her bubble gum. _Cyclone fruits_ …  
  
The room, predictably, is more functional than comfortable. Two single beds, separated by a plywood nightstand with a screwed-on TV remote. The beige-coloured curtains aren’t quite wide enough to close all the way; a two-inch gap down the middle lets in an anemic stripe of streetlight.   
  
His voice is quiet and steady. “You will have to undress, I am afraid.”  
Logan isn’t sure who the priest is apologizing to, him or himself or some other, higher force. He shrugs off his bike jacket, lets it fall to the floor near the door. He pulls his shirt over his head without undoing the buttons, kicks off his boots. He doesn’t turn his back, but the other’s man’s dark eyes are modestly averted anyway.   
  
“You want me on the bed?”  
It isn’t meant as a double entendre. A nod and Logan lies on his back, feeling more naked than he’d expected. It’s not an entirely unpleasant feeling. He watches the other man set his bag on the nightstand; an old-fashioned doctors valise, black leather with a hinged clasp. He pulls out cotton swabs, alcohol, a straight razor. He changes his mind and puts the alcohol and swabs back. His eyes meet Logan’s as he flicks the razor open and Logan’s mouth goes bone dry.  
  
“Wait.”  
  
The priest’s hand lowers, shaking. He cocks his head to one side, a very Kurt gesture that looks gently surreal on a man of the cloth.  
  
“I don’t want you touching me unless you look like you.”  
  
The other man shakes his head, makes to put the razor away. Again, “No, wait.” Logan raises his arm, pillows his head in the crook of his elbow. “OK, have it your way. But why a priest?”  
  
“I believe…”  
  
“I know that. What else?”  
  
The dark-haired man raises one shoulder in a shrug.   
  
“People leave priests alone. I have respect like this.”  
  
“People usually give me a pretty wide berth and I don’t go around wearing a disguise.”  
  
Kurt almost smiles.  
  
“It’s a different kind of immunity.” He says, softly, as Logan lies back down.  
  
  
Sunday, 11.10pm  
  
Kurt watches in rapt fascination as the blood wells along the incision line, swells convex then spills and pools, the cut smoothing shut behind it like a zip-lock bag. _All your sins wiped clean_. A tracery of razor-slices, running red in constant flux, opening under his hand, moving onward over tanned skin just fast enough to outrun the healing from the other end of the pattern he is carving. Sins in blood; anger, pride, profanity, lust. Sometimes the cuts are so clean that they don’t even bleed before they heal unless he pauses to pull the edges apart.  
  
Logan lies silent and patient, watching him work, his eyes hooded, fixed on the other man’s solemn face. Occasionally, he flinches. The pain is nothing to what he’s used to feeling every single day, but it still stings in a confusing, delicious way. An angled gash, spiraling into his inner thigh and Logan moans loudly. Hopes Kurt mistakes that for pain, too, although the evidence must be hard to ignore even for a man so used to averting his eyes as the priest. He shifts fitfully as the blade kisses his skin, claiming him. Intimately. Is the priest looking at him? Yes, he’s looking. Calm eyes in a face of mourning. _Longing_. Why this funeral when we’re still alive? When we could be so full of life?  
  
“How can you believe in something that you can’t see?”  
  
The younger man lays down the blade with a metallic click on the nightstand.  
“Faith, Logan. How can you believe then in honour, or in love, when you cannot see them?”  
  
“But you can see them in action. Acts of bravery, acts of love. Where’s the evidence of God?”  
  
Kurt takes a cloth and begins to wipe away the traces of blood from Logan’s stomach. The proximity without contact is almost too much to bear.  
  
“Every time you see an act of love, there you see evidence of God.” His hand just brushes Logan’s cock and Logan hisses breath in through clenched teeth. Kurt is naked; he can sense it but he can’t see it, not through the protective mask of the Inducer. Sometimes you accept what you can’t see; long years wiped from your memory, feelings that you know are real. He swallows hard, says, “Then why do you stop yourself acting on love?”  
  
  
Monday, 12.22am  
  
They almost-kiss for the longest time, their lips brushing ghost-light, the touch more breath than skin, moving close, closest then pulling back. The tease is so exquisite it’s almost unbearable; sweeter and more painful than the blade.  
_Anything worth having is worth waiting for._  
Little curls of smoke escape from the priest’s parted lips, his eyes flash an unnatural yellow. He says, “I should go. This isn’t right.”  
  
“Fuck right.” Logan growls, grabs him roughly around the wrist and pulls him close. The Image Inducer dislodges under his palm, protesting with an electrical hum and Kurt lets out a little gasp of dismay and excitement because yes, this is happening and he can’t hold out any longer.  
The hologram surrounding the younger man buzzes and stutters, flicking rapidly on and off, a strobe of holy and desirous. When it winks out completely it’s black hair, un-peppered by grey that Logan tangles his hands in, the lips that open under his are blue.  
  
_I could be religious if you didn’t have to kneel so much._  
  
Logan gets to his knees and bows his head to kiss the man’s throat. A little gold crucifix swings in the hollow between Kurt’s collar-bones, the gold echoing the gold of his eyes. Logan can smell the metal, but under his lips it is skin-warm. He takes the chain gently in his teeth and tugs. When Kurt lowers his head to kiss Logan’s forehead, the eyes that look up at him are unprecedentedly trusting. When Logan lays Kurt down on the bed, he sees sins already paid for. His map of desire, etched into his skin, his body the map to Logan’s promised land. His path to escape. _His way home_.  
And God is everywhere, God is in all things. God is the shade of blue of his palms, God is the sweat running down his back. Because it isn’t what you have faith in that counts; it is the fact that you have found it. It’s not how or where you fall in love; it’s the fact that you _fall_.


End file.
